Bellydancer Avigail Klein received an invitation this week to appear in Egypt - at Taba, just across the Israeli border. She won't be accepting it. She fears she'd be arrested the moment she set foot on Egyptian territory. At the very time that the job offer was winging its way towards her, Egyptian newspapers were running Ms Klein's picture under headlines asserting that she is a Mossad agent, who earlier this year was ordered to seduce and then blackmail Egypt's ambassador in Israel, Mr Mohammed Bassiouny.
Ms Klein's appearances on Israeli Television this week - in interviews insisting that she has no connection with the Mossad, and that she has never had any kind of personal relationship with Mr Bassiouny - represent the latest twist in an embarrassing saga for the ambassador, and one that underlines the heavy strains in the Israeli-Egyptian relationship after almost two decades of peace.
The suave, silver-haired Ambassador Bassiouny is the doyen of the diplomatic corps here, a permanent fixture, both popular and influential. But this summer, for the first time, he began speaking publicly about returning to Egypt, claiming that he was being harassed. He talked of unpleasant phone calls to his private residence, and of an incident when, returning from a trip to Egypt, his diplomatic immunity was ignored and his car searched at the border crossing. Then, earlier this month, sensational allegations about a liaison between Mr Bassiouny and a bellydancer named only as "A" hit the Israeli front pages. The bellydancer had filed a police complaint alleging that the envoy had made "indecent" advances on her; he issued a counter-accusation of attempted blackmail.
Nobody knew quite what to make of the tale until the Israeli state prosecutor, Ms Edna Arbel, cleared up the confusion. Announcing that the bellydancer had been questioned and the ambassador, in keeping with his diplomatic privileges, had been interviewed, she said she had decided not to investigate either of the complaints further.
By way of explanation, Ms Arbel observed that there had been some kind of relationship between Ambassador Bassiouny and bellydancer A, that she had turned up to meet him wearing provocative clothing, and that her complaint made no allegation of force being used against her.
Mr Bassiouny, who is married with two children, sought indignantly to clear his name. He insisted that the episode was only the latest in the series of efforts to harass him, and that the real target was not him personally, but his country - that someone, in short, was bent on harming Israeli-Egyptian ties.
Whoever that someone may be, the ties are certainly being harmed. Not only by the rumpus surrounding Ambassador Bassiouny, but also over the conviction of an Israeli Druse man, Azzam Azzam, on spying charges in Cairo earlier this summer. Israel insists Mr Azzam is innocent, and the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has bitterly attacked the Egyptian justice system over the case.
The tension in Israeli-Egyptian relations, of course, mirrors the strains in all Israel's Arab ties these days, the gradual replacement of peace talk by war talk.
Only this week the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, has been shuttling around Middle Eastern capitals, reportedly warning of Israeli plans for a major military operation in south Lebanon.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report